- NYC: Mamdani Stacks Board to Push Through Promised Rent Freeze
Source: Bloomberg
“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced six new appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board, a nine-member panel tasked with governing rent-stabilized units. Mamdani said in a statement Wednesday that the newly composed board will ‘take a clear-eyed look at the complex housing landscape and the realities facing our city’s two million rent-stabilized tenants, and help us move closer to a fairer, more affordable New York.’ The new Mayor is seeking to fulfill one of his signature campaign promises to freeze rents on the city’s 1 million rent-regulated apartments. Landlords and business groups have contended that, despite rising rents on price-stabilized units, rental income isn’t keeping pace with faster inflation and escalating expenses.” (02/18/26)
- Power trumps tariffs as another US aluminium smelter shuts
Source: Reuters
“U.S. import tariffs haven’t been enough to stop the United States losing another aluminium smelter, leaving the country with just five primary metal production plants. Century Aluminum suspended production at its Hawesville smelter in 2022 as energy prices spiked in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The company expected to resume operations within a year once power prices abated. But they didn’t, and Century has now sold the Kentucky site to digital infrastructure company TeraWulf. U.S. President Donald Trump hiked aluminium import tariffs to 50% last year with the stated goal of halting the decades-long slide in domestic primary metal capacity. The immediate impact has been limited to Century’s restart of 50,000 metric tons of annual capacity at its Mount Holly smelter in South Carolina. Tariffs helped, but an extension, opens new tab of the current power supply deal with local energy provider Santee Cooper was arguably more important.” (02/18/26)
- TX: Teen falsely accused of race-based bullying wins $3.2 million verdict
Source: Fox News
“A Texas jury has delivered a decisive verdict in a case that once ignited national outrage and dominated headlines. Five years after a classmate accused Asher Vann of racially motivated bullying at a sleepover, jurors awarded Vann — now a college freshman — $3.2 million in damages, finding that false claims and a viral narrative caused severe emotional distress and invaded his privacy. … The case stemmed from a 2021 incident in which 13-year-old SeMarion Humphrey alleged that Vann and several other boys shot him with a BB gun and forced him to drink urine during a sleepover — accusations that were quickly framed as race-based bullying and drew national media attention, protests and involvement from activists. Vann said the accusations were far from the truth.” (02/18/26)
- Blaming Buildings for Sex Trafficking
Source: Reason
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown“Can a building be a sex trafficker? Some lawyers seem to be hoping so. Apartment buildings, nightclubs, and hotels have been coming under fire for facilitating interactions that some say should have been tip-offs to sex trafficking or sexual violence taking place. Victims in these lawsuits describe some heinous actions by their alleged abusers. I’m not trying to minimize any such harm or suggest actual perpetrators of violence shouldn’t be punished. But in the push to hold more entities legally accountable for alleged sex crimes against women, these suits are setting up a system in which women are increasingly watched and their sex lives increasingly subject to questioning. The end result here isn’t likely to be a world in which women are safer but one in which they’re more surveilled.” (02/18/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/18/blaming-buildings-for-sex-trafficking/
- We have to trust liberty completely
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“As Voltairine de Cleyre wrote in 1908, ‘[T]he sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly.’ They thought America could have liberty along with a central government — a state. It didn’t work. Now we are stuck with a growing police state, and the tatters of our remaining liberty are being criminalized at an astonishing rate. This won’t end well. Liberty is indivisible — it can’t be broken into pieces and remain liberty. You can’t respect it selectively (for some people, in some areas, some of the time) and call it ‘liberty.’ True liberty requires consistent respect for everyone’s rights, everywhere, all the time.” (02/18/26)
- My Plea To Team Gold
Source: The Findings Substack
by Paul Rosenberg“I’m a bitcoin advocate, but I also love gold and silver; they’re honest money with no necessity of a counter-party. That is, they’re wonderful for decentralized commerce, which we and the world very much need. My plea to Team Gold is to begin using their wonderful money, rather than leaving it forever on shelves. (Whether their own or in a vault.) By no means am I opposed to keeping gold as an insurance policy; it’s great for that use. But the monetary metals have just enjoyed a great and long overdue run-up, at this point I think we need to take the next logical step: To start using our better money. … we’ll simultaneously build a new infrastructure. And I know this is true because I’ve watched it happen twice in a row over the past twenty-five years: first for e-gold and then for bitcoin.” (02/18/26)
- Senator Tom Cotton’s Ode to US Nuclear Weapons
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter“Hawkish Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has never been a big fan of arms control agreements. His new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal confirms that his attitude has not softened in the slightest. … His goal is to justify an extensive increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal under the label of ‘modernization.’ Cotton’s op-ed presents a six-part plan for doing so.” (02/18/26)
- The 2020 “stolen election” obsession: Cynical? Delusional? Reptilian?
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will“Asked what she thought of an attack on the poet Lord Byron’s morals, a wit replied, ‘It is the first time I ever heard of them.’ You might say the same if asked what you think about proofs that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Donald Trump’s belief in widespread fraud in the casting and counting of 2020 ballots is entailed by his belief that it is theoretically impossible for him to lose at anything. His certitude infects millions of Americans, some of whom think it inconceivable that he could ever be mistaken. Others doubt that anyone could win the presidency while obsessing about a complex conspiracy for which there is no evidence. … It would be reassuring to think that Trump believes nothing he says about 2020: Cynicism in the presidency is less disturbing than delusion. But reassurance is not plausible.” (02/18/26)
- Pupil power: Why the US South is seeing education gains
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“In a well-known folktale, young Goldilocks tests out three bears’ porridge (too hot, too cold, just right), as well as their chairs and beds. The story delights most children of preschool age. But when these children enter school, according to education experts in the United States, a ‘Goldilocks approach’ to developing foundational skills does not serve them well. Teaching and grading that aligns content and standards to a ‘just right’ fit, rather than challenging students to grow, is a disservice, in the view of University of Illinois Chicago literacy professor Timothy Shanahan. ‘This popular approach to teaching has been holding kids back rather than helping them succeed,’ he wrote in The Conversation last fall. ‘Students learn more when taught with more difficult texts.'” (02/17/26)
- With Trump hitting new lows, the GOP is experiencing a moral reckoning
Source: The Hill
by Max Burns“The Lenten season offers us the opportunity to look beyond ourselves and our short-term interests. That call to humility and service feels more needed than ever. If Trump and his weak Republican enablers on Capitol Hill won’t humble themselves to serve the public, voters will be more than willing to do the humbling for them.” (02/18/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5741875-trump-moral-decline-lent/
- The Year of the Independent
Source: RealClearPolitics
by Adam Brandon“Nearly half of Americans now refuse to identify as either Democrat or Republican. According to a recent Gallup poll, independents make up a record 45% of the electorate, compared to just 27% who identify as Democrats and 27% as Republicans. Yet our political system continues to operate as though this plurality doesn’t exist – until now. Both major political parties are facing widespread public dissatisfaction, with 58% of Americans viewing the Republican Party unfavorably and 61% expressing unfavorable views of the Democratic Party. As confidence in the parties erodes, 2026 is shaping up to be the year that we see a handful of independents elected to Congress, disrupting the balance of power in Washington.” (02/18/26)
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/02/18/the_year_of_the_independent_153850.html
- The AI Future: Between Certain Doom and Endless Prosperity
Source: Cato Institute
by Kevin T Frazier“Since early 2023, the AI discourse in the popular press and in legislative chambers has been defined by extremes. Then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer invited AI experts to the Senate and heard extensively about the existential risks posed by AI. He wasn’t the only one to associate AI with the potential end of humanity. Then-FTC Chair Lina Khan shared that she had a p(doom) of around 15 percent — her odds that AI would cause a cataclysmic event. … Today, plenty of folks are convinced of exactly the opposite. Tech luminaries such as Elon Musk envision a bright future in which humanity is surrounded by abundance. Conversations around the end of work, universal basic income, and similar utopian outcomes (to some) pass for normal chatter these days.” (02/18/26)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/ai-future-between-certain-doom-endless-prosperity
- The Ticking Time Bomb Looming Over Gaza
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“One under-discussed ticking time bomb is the way Israel keeps saying it’s going to resume incinerating Gaza if Hamas doesn’t disarm while Hamas keeps saying it won’t disarm. Netanyahu’s office is saying that Hamas will soon be given a 60-day deadline to give up its arms, after which the full-scale bombing of the enclave will resume if these demands aren’t met. A lot of people don’t understand that Hamas has never at any point agreed to give up its weapons. To give up its weapons would be to surrender, which is a very different thing from agreeing to a ceasefire. … Israel and its allies have no legitimate basis upon which to demand that Hamas surrender. All they can legitimately do is stop murdering and abusing the Palestinians.” (02/18/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/02/18/the-ticking-time-bomb-looming-over-gaza-and-other-notes/
- The Prairieland 19 Case Is a Test for Criminalizing Dissent
Source: Jacobin
by Jarrod Shanahan“Some in the Trump administration may now regret calling Renée Good and Alex Pretti ‘domestic terrorists.’ The hasty application of this label by Kristi Noem, J. D. Vance, and other hard-liners generated justifiable outrage and helped mobilize opposition to Donald Trump’s terror campaign against immigrants. Meanwhile, however, a far less-publicized case threatens to provide an enduring legal framework by which virtually anybody involved in activism against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or Trump’s agenda more broadly, can be labeled a ‘domestic terrorist’ and treated accordingly.” (02/18/26)
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/prairieland-trump-domestic-terrorism-ice/
- Are Transfers Replacing Work for America’s Poor?
Source: The Daily Economy
by Tyler Turman“CBO data show that government transfers now account for a historically large share of income among low-income households. Does today’s welfare system encourage mobility or entrench dependency?” (02/18/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/are-transfers-replacing-work-for-americas-poor/
- The student loan system is working just perfectly
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall“As we’ve been known to remark around here prices are information. We may not like the information being transmitted but that’s an incentive to change what is being done rather than to try and hide the price. On this basis the student loan system is working just perfectly …. We are seeing the price of trying to have 50% of the age cohort going to university. It’s a very high price too. One that — clearly — isn’t worth it as the whingeing is showing. But that’s what having that price, clear and obvious, does for us. Tells us that this isn’t working. … The price is too high therefore we need to change what we’re doing.” (02/18/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-student-loan-system-is-working-just-perfectly
- Rise in transgender killers proves we have a major mental health crisis unfolding
Source: New York Post
by Karol Markowicz“In what is becoming a regular occurrence, someone trans-identifying is accused of committing a mass murder, this time during a high school hockey game, in suburban Rhode Island. Robert Dorgan, who preferred to be called Roberta, killed his ex-wife and one of his own children and shot three more people before turning a gun on himself. In 2020, Dorgan had told police that he was being kicked out of his home, by his father-in-law, after Dorgan had undergone ‘gender-reassignment surgery.’ His wife, Rhonda Dorgan, wrote ‘gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits’ as her grounds for divorce, but those words were crossed out and ‘irreconcilable differences which have caused the immediate breakdown of the marriage’ was written instead.” (02/17/26)
- Calling John Adams
Source: Law & Liberty
by Andrew E Busch“Minneapolis isn’t the first American city to grapple with high-profile shootings of civilians at the hands of panicked law enforcement.” (02/18/26)
- Europe is still clinging to America’s security blanket
Source: spiked
by Frank Furedi“US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s speech to the Munich Security Conference (MSC) last week was significant not for what he said, but for European leaders’ reaction to it. … Judging by European members’ response, they were clearly desperate to hear what sounded like a reassuring message from Washington. The audience broke into applause when Rubio stated that ‘we will always be a child of Europe’. At the end they even gave the secretary of state a standing ovation. For a few moments at least, they could enjoy the illusion that they were listening to a close family member.” (02/18/26)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/02/18/europe-is-still-clinging-to-americas-security-blanket/
- Reason Interview: Fardad Farahzad
Source: Reason
“Can Iran’s Protest Movement Topple the Regime?” (02/18/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/02/18/can-irans-protest-movement-topple-the-regime/
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 02/18/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Trump’s Son Invests In Israeli ‘Low Cost-Per-Kill’ Drone Company.” (02/18/26)
- Cato Daily Podcast, 02/17/26
Source: Cato Institute
“Ed Crane and the Ideas that Changed Washington — and the World.” (02/17/26)
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/ed-crane-ideas-changed-washington-world
- Freedom Works with Paul Molloy, 02/18/26: Steve Swedberg
Source: Freedom Works
“Steve Swedberg, Competitive Enterprise Institute ‘January Inflation Numbers.'” (02/18/26)
https://internetradiopros.com/freedomworks/?name=2026-02-19_zfw002162026.mp3